While I am snowed (or iced) in tonight--again!--I am thinking once again about how happy I am that real estate is not as time sensitive as some other industries. If you had a restaurant this week, or a theater, or an airline, you would be losing revenue that wouldn't be replaced, in many cases. With real estate, it's different. I was looking at Google Analytics tonight, which tells us how many people look at http://www.hpearce.com/, and from what sites those people reach us, and it was amazing. Every snowstorm for the past month had a huge spike upward, showing us that prospective buyers and sellers are using the downtime we've all experienced when there just isn't anything to do in all this snow, and they are using it to look for real estate on the Web. They can't get out to look at property (we didn't even officially open our offices today, preferring to leave the roads to those who absolutely need to get to work), but they certainly are thinking about it.
That's great news for us. We already know that a bad, snowy winter is usually devoid of sales, but that it is generally followed by a robust spring market. All that searching on the internet, and all that time cooped up inside, leads to a frenzy of springtime real estate activity. If that's the normal pattern, what on earth will we see this spring? Real estate flying off the MLS in April and May, we hope! So, if you are a potential seller, use this indoor time to de-clutter your home and do all those fix-it projects. If you are a potential buyer, keep surfing the net--we'll be waiting for you when the sun shines!
